Humor 11/28/99: Three Gifts & Living Life

Hi everyone,

I hope you had a great Thanksgiving. Some classmates and friends came
over for a potluck dinner. We didn't have turkey, but lots of good
Chinese food. I also watched six movies on DVD. When I bought my DVD
player, there was a coupon from Netflix.com for 15 free DVD rentals.
However, you have to watch all 15 in one month, and can only have four
movies checked out at one time. I've decided to rent Chinese movies,
either Jet Li, Jackie Chan, Chow Yun-fat or some good martial arts
movies. So I aim to watch the 11 remaining movies before I leave for
New York on December 16th.

One of these movies that I recommend is "My Father Is a Hero" (1998),
starring Jet Li and Anita Mui. It's based very loosely on "True Lies",
but more wholesome and touching.

This week's thought provoking question is: "If you could physically
transport yourself to any place in the world at this moment, where would
you go?"

This week's recommended website is: www.activebuyersguide.com. I came
across this site while shopping for a digital camera. This site asks
you a bunch of questions and then recommends several different models
based on your answers. Some of the questions are like those in an
optometrist office: you have to pick between two set of features. The
site also allows you then to compare the models side by side according
to different features. This site can be used for a wide variety of
electronics and other products. To my classmates: if you are
interested in looking at an example of a value-added B2C e-Commerce
website, you should take a look at this site.

This week's humor was forwarded by Reiko Muto, followed by an
inspirational piece forwarded by John Chao.

Enjoy!

-Josh.
_________________________________________

Three Gifts

Three sons left home, went out on their own and prospered. Getting back
together, they discussed the gifts they were able to give their elderly
mother.

The first said, "I built a big house for our mother." The second said,
"I sent her a Mercedes with a driver." The third smiled and said, "I've
got you both beat. You remember how mom enjoyed reading the Bible? And
you know she can't see very well. So I sent her a remarkable parrot
that recites the entire Bible. It took elders in the church 12 years to
teach him. He's one of a kind. Mama just has to name the chapter and
verse, and the parrot recites it."

Soon thereafter, mom sent out her letters of thanks:

"Milton," she wrote one son, "The house you built is so huge. I live in
only one room, but I have to clean the whole house."

"Gerald," she wrote to another, "I am too old to travel. I stay most of
the time at home, so I rarely use the Mercedes. And the driver is so
rude!"

"Dearest Donald," she wrote to her third son, "You have the good sense
to know what your mother likes. The chicken was delicious."
____________________________

Anna Quinlen's Villanova Commencement Address -

It's a great honor for me to be the third member of my family to receive
an honorary doctorate from this great university. It's a honor to
follow my great-uncle Jim, who was a gifted physician, and my Uncle
Jack, who is a remarkable businessman. Both of them could have told you
something important about their professions, about medicine or commerce.
I have no specialized field of interest or expertise, which puts me at a
disadvantage, talking to you today. I'm a novelist. My work is human
nature. Real life is all I know. Don't ever confuse the two, your life
and your work. The second is only part of the first. Don't ever forget
what a friend once wrote Senator Paul Tsongas when the senator decided
not to run for re-election because he'd been diagnosed with cancer: "No
man ever said on his deathbed I wish I had spent more time in the
office."

Don't ever forget the words my father sent me on a postcard last year:
"If you win the rat race, you're still a rat." Or what John Lennon
wrote before he was gunned down in the driveway of the Dakota: "Life is
what happens while you are busy making other plans." You walk out of
here this afternoon with only one thing that no one else has. There will
be hundreds of people out there with your same degree; there will be
thousands of people doing what you want to do for a living. But you will
be the only person alive who has sole custody of your life. Your
particular life. Your entire life. Not just your life at a desk, or
your life on a bus, or in a car, or at the computer. Not just the life
of your mind, but the life of your heart. Not just your bank account,
but your soul. People don't talk about the soul very much anymore. It's
so much easier to write a resume than to craft a spirit. But a resume
is a cold comfort on a winter night, or when you're sad, or broke, or
lonely, or when you've gotten back the test results and they're not so
good.

Here is my resume. I am a good mother to three children. I have tried
never to let my profession stand in the way of being a good parent. I
no longer consider myself the center of the universe. I show up. I
listen. I try to laugh. I am a good friend to my husband. I have tried
to make marriage vows mean what they say. I show up. I listen. I try
to laugh. I am a good friend to my friends, and they to me. Without
them, there would be nothing to say to you today, because I would be a
cardboard cutout. But I call them on the phone, and I meet them for
lunch. I show up. I listen. I try to laugh. I would be rotten, or at
best mediocre at my job, if those other things were not true.

You cannot be really first rate at your work if your work is all you
are. So here's what I wanted to tell you today: get a life. A real
life, not a manic pursuit of the next promotion, the bigger paycheck,
the larger house. Do you think you'd care so very much about those
things if you blew an aneurysm one afternoon, or found a lump in your
breast? Get a life in which you notice the smell of salt water pushing
itself on a breeze over Seaside Heights, a life in which you stop and
watch how a red tailed hawk circles over the water gap or the way a baby
scowls with concentration when she tries to pick up a Cheerio with her
thumb and first finger. Get a life in which you are not alone.

Find people you love, and who love you. And remember that love is not
leisure, it is work. Each time you look at your diploma, remember that
you are still a student, still learning how to best treasure your
connection to others. Pick up the phone. Send an e-mail. Write a
letter. Kiss your Mom. Hug your Dad. Get a life in which you are
generous. Look around at the azaleas in the suburban neighborhood where
you grew up; look at a full moon hanging silver in a black, black sky on
a cold night. And realize that life is the best thing ever, and that
you have no business taking it for granted. Care so deeply about its
goodness that you want to spread it around. Take money you would have
spent on beers and give it to charity. Work in a soup kitchen. Be a
big brother or sister.

All of you want to do well. But if you do not do good, too, then doing
well will never be enough. It is so easy to waste our lives: our days,
our hours, our minutes. It is so easy to take for granted the color of
the azaleas, the sheen of the limestone on Fifth Avenue, the color of
our kid's eyes, the way the melody in a symphony rises and falls and
disappears and rises again. It is so easy to exist instead of live. I
learned to live many years ago. Something really, really bad happened
to me, something that changed my life in ways that, if I had my
druthers, it would never have been changed at all. And what I learned
from it is what, today, seems to be the hardest lesson of all. I
learned to love the journey, not the destination. I learned that it is
not a dress rehearsal, and that today is the only guarantee you get. I
learned to look at all the good in the world and to try to give some of
it back because I believed in it completely and utterly. And I tried to
do that, in part, by telling others what I had learned. By telling them
this: Consider the lilies of the field. Look at the fuzz on a baby's
ear. Read in the backyard with the sun on your face. Learn to be
happy. And think of life as a terminal illness because if you do you
will live it with joy and passion as it ought to be lived. Well, you
can learn all those things, out there, if you get a real life, a full
life, a professional life, yes, but another life, too, a life of love
and laughs and a connection to other human beings. Just keep your eyes
and ears open. Here you could learn in the classroom. There the
classroom is everywhere. The exam comes at the very end. No man ever
said on his deathbed I wish I had spent more time at the office.

I found one of my best teachers on the boardwalk at Coney Island maybe
15 years ago. It was December, and I was doing a story about how the
homeless survive in the winter months. He and I sat on the edge of the
wooden supports, dangling our feet over the side, and he told me about
his schedule, panhandling the boulevard when the summer crowds were
gone, sleeping in a church when the temperature went below freezing,
hiding from the police amidst the Tilt a Whirl and the Cyclone and some
of the other seasonal rides. But he told me that most of the time he
stayed on the boardwalk, facing the water, just the way we were sitting
now even when it got cold and he had to wear his newspapers after he
read them. And I asked him why. Why didn't he go to one of the
shelters? Why didn't he check himself into the hospital for detox? And
he just stared out at the ocean and said, "Look at the view, young
lady. Look at the view." And every day, in some little way, I try to do
what he said. I try to look at the view. And that's the last thing I
have to tell you today, words of wisdom from a man with not a dime in
his pocket, no place to go, nowhere to be. Look at the view. You'll
never be disappointed.
--
_____________________________________

Joshua Li
14400 Addison Ave. #119
Sherman Oaks CA 91423
(818)461-8930
Instant Messenger ID: joshli
Permanent Email: joshli@post.harvard.edu
http://personal.anderson.ucla.edu/joshua.li/